he French ambassador to his court, under instructions followed
him. The King with moderation and temper told him (July 11) he had just
received a telegram that the answer of Prince Leopold would certainly
reach him the next day, and he would then at once communicate it.
Something (some say Bismarck) prevented the arrival of the courier for
some hours beyond the time anticipated. On the morning of the 13th the
King met Benedetti on the promenade, and asked him if he had anything new
to say. The ambassador obeyed his orders, and told the King of the demand
for assurances against a future candidature. The King at once refused this
new and unexpected concession, but in parting from Benedetti said they
would resume their conversation in the afternoon. Meanwhile the courier
arrived, but before the courier a despatch came from Paris conveying the
suggestion that the King might write an apologetic letter to the French
Emperor. This naturally gave the King some offence, but he contented
himself with sending Benedetti a polite message by an aide-de-camp that he
had received in writing from Prince Leopold the intelligence of his
renunciation. "By this his Majesty considered the question as settled."
Benedetti persevered in seeking to learn what answer he should make to his
government on the question of further assurances. The King replied by the
same officer that he was obliged to decline absolutely to enter into new
negotiations; that what he had said in the morning was his last word in
the matter. On July 14, the King received Benedetti in the railway
carriage on his departure for Berlin, told him that any future
negotiations would be conducted by his government, and parted from him
with courteous salutations. Neither king nor ambassador was conscious that
the country of either had suffered a shadow of indignity from the
representative of the other.

Bismarck called upon the British ambassador in those days, and made what,
in the light of later revelations, seems a singular complaint. He observed
that Great Britain "should have forbidden France to enter on the war. She
was in a position to do so, and her interests and those of Europe demanded
it of her."(209) Later in the year he spoke in the same sense at
Versailles: "If, at the beginning of the war, the English had said to
Napoleon, 'There must be no war,' there would have been none."(210) What
is certain is that nobody would have been more discomfited by the success
of England